Red & Blue
by Aveza
Summary: "Do you wonder, Sora?" asked Piyomon. "What Yamato will get you?" [Sorato Christmas one-shot, set in 2005 (in the Tri-verse!)]


_\- Red & Blue -_

xXx

 **S** ora stared in brow-creasing focus at her fingers. Her knuckles arched, joints moving in tight circular motions, conditioned into a mechanical repeat. Slim bamboo needles crossed and slipped and tucked between plushy threads of red yarn. Piyomon stood by, feeding string to Sora from the basket sitting on the floor between them. Occasionally, the feathered digimon would raise her plumy crown, blink eyes like cobalt glass, and Sora would catch the inquisitive tilt of the head, see the soft, white flurries of Tokyo's first snow behind her, framed in a bedroom window.

"Sora," she began, nosing back into the yarn, beak poking among the knots and gnarls. "What are you getting Yamato for Christmas?"

Sora marked her place in knitting, the tip of one needle poised to snatch up the next loop. She smiled.

"I'm making him something, Piyo," she said, and to declare it then sent a wave of pride over the infancy of her design. She pinched the knit yarn, thumb sweeping over its softness. Even as her skin felt the tickle of the fabric, she imagined another hand in her place, cold and dry, calloused in certain areas. "Gloves for his hands," she added, knowing what her friend would ask next.

"What do gloves do?" asked Piyomon.

"They protect," answered Sora. "They're warm. They comfort." Still marking her spot, she held out what she had knitted thus far, the bundled square of strings resting in the curve of her palm. Piyomon nestled into the knit, swishing her face back and forth across its cushy surface, cooing with delight throughout.

"So soft!" she rejoiced.

Sora giggled, reaching out and patting her digimon on the cheek.

"I suppose something of his has to be snug and fluffy," she said. "He can't be cool and distant _all_ the time."

"But he's not!" cried Piyomon. "Not with you!" Sora assured her with a smile that she was only teasing, but she felt a flutter in her heart at the second statement. It was only a flicker, as quick and cold as the jolt of a snowflake melting on the hand, but the warmth that followed in her cheeks had her reaching for her knitting needles again. Quickly, she fell back into the repetition, the snatch of a string, pulled and looped, then back again. Piyomon, too, returned to her respective role, unraveling yarn with the point of her beak, guiding it to Sora's deft hands.

When finished, she laid the fruits of her labor flat on the floor in between her and Piyomon, and the digimon leaned over them, looking at the gloves with eyes like blue glass.

"He'll be even happier when you give these to him!" she chimed. Sora's fingers flew to her cheek, testing it for heat, and found that it burned. _Happier_ , her friend had said, which meant only one thing: Yamato was already happy, somehow, someway, because of her. Piyomon continued: "I like the way he looks when you give him presents you make him. I remember the first time you gave him those cookies you baked three Christmases ago!"

Sora laughed, recalling the moment herself, remembering how his eyes brightened and opened when she lifted the lid off the box, as if there were a baby inside, or a puppy, radiating beams of light. Gabumon had laid a claw on Yamato's pant leg, yearning for a look himself. It was a look equivalent to a spoken, " _Really? This is for me?_ " as if to think about him was a miracle in and of itself, a rarity to be met with equal amounts caution and wonder. How many times Sora had wanted to say, " _Don't look so surprised. I think about you all the time._ "

"Let's wrap it, Piyo?" she asked.

The digimon flapped her wings, hopping over to a bag of giftwrap and boxes, ribbons and tissue paper. Sora trusted her selection, and as the snow continued to fall outside, they bundled and wrapped and boxed and tied.

When they were done, and Yamato's gift sat small and squat, all powder blue and glittery crimson ribbon, Sora sat back on her legs, turning burgundy eyes out her window.

"Do you wonder, Sora?" asked Piyomon.

"Hmm?"

"What Yamato will get you?"

Sora shook her head.

"No," she said, not in the least disappointed. "Yamato gets me the same thing every year."

"What's that?"

Sora tapped her temple and winked at Piyomon as she stood up on her feet.

"A thought," she said, keeping cryptic. "Yamato always gives me a thought for Christmas."

xXx

He should have been thinking about red. That seemed the most obvious pattern of logic. She had red hair. Her eyes were a dark, burnished wine-red. She favored the warmer hues in the color wheel, her closet spotted with yellows and oranges, accented in _red_.

Yamato sighed and fell backwards on his bed, his bass guitar over his lap, fingers locking behind his hair.

And yet, all he could think about was _blue_.

"Are you brooding again, my friend?"

Yamato curbed a benign grunt as Gabumon patted a claw on his knee, furry, uni-horned head poking into his periphery.

"No," said Yamato. He looked south, meeting Gabumon's owlish brown eyes. "I'm just thinking."

"About what?"

"A..." He trailed off, looking for the right word. Easily, he could have said Sora, and, while innocent, he was sure his digimon could decipher his unique attachment to her (as opposed to his friendships with the other Chosen), but Yamato wanted precision. It could have very well been argued that he thought about Sora all the time anyway, and his thoughts were now the nuances of her inexplicable prevalence.

"...color," he decided.

"Is it blue?" asked Gabumon. Yamato sat up, eyebrow piqued, both impressed and disturbed at his friend's clairvoyance.

"Actually, it is. How did you...?"

"You have a lot of blue in your room, Yamato," stated Gabumon. He cast his stare broadly over the surroundings. Blue bed sheets. Blue rug. Blue uniform blazer. Pale blue walls. Even Gabumon's fur was blue. His crest was blue. Yamato frowned, suspecting his fixation on the color as the possibility that he was just thinking about himself, ego-tripping in daydreams when he should have been figuring out what to get Sora for Christmas.

"I guess you're right," he admitted. "I do have a lot of blue in here."

"Why do you think that is?"

Yamato narrowed his gaze.

"Is that rhetorical?"

His digimon looked at him innocently.

"I don't know what rhetorical means."

He smiled faintly, allowing the point, and leaned forward, planting elbows on knees as he stared at his blue laundry hamper over the bridge of his clasped fingers.

"I guess there's a lot of blue because when people usually think of the color, they think of... cold."

"You could use a nice pair of gloves honestly," remarked Gabumon. "You kept blowing into your hands on your way home from band practice."

"That's different," said Yamato. "The _weather_ is cold. _I'm_ no-" He cut himself off, teeth biting into tongue as he stopped the lie. He _was_ cold, in the figurative sense at least. Distant. Removed. Sometimes unforgiving.

His memory spiked with the image of his child self in that dark cave in the Digital World, murked in shadow, drenched in fear and hopelessness as thick and choking as tar. But in the middle of it, he remembered a flash of blue, one that seemed to call to him like a song attuned to his own heartbeat, personal and close.

But that color from his memory didn't belong to him. For once, something blue wasn't his to own. It belonged to someone else. He closed his eyes, eased his bass guitar upright on his lap, fingers blindly feeling frets. Gently, he plucked strings, emitting slow and meditative pulsing hums into the quiet room.

Sora wore a blue hat throughout their entire journey in the Digital World, a bright and happy blue, a soothing blue, a calming blue. And she wore it when he found her in the dark cave. His brow furrowed, the memory sharpening as he swam through its current. In the dim, he remembered her burgundy eyes lifting beneath the shade of that hat as she raised her head, how they shed tears when he and Jyou helped pull her free.

"Yamato?" said Gabumon.

Yamato's eyes snapped open, and he tossed the guitar and got up, pulling a coat on as he went for the door. He motioned for Gabumon to follow him.

"Where are we going?" asked the digimon. "Why the sudden rush?"

They stepped out of the apartment building and into the light flurry of Tokyo's first snow. The evening was deep indigo, city lights white and bright against the stark sky. Yamato led the way to the nearest metro.

"I know what to get Sora," he said.

xXx

Christmas Eve she found herself on the Ishida doorstep, a box in hand and a rosiness in her face, though she couldn't feel it. She watched as breath escaped her mouth in a sluggish grey mist, blurring Yamato's face when he answered the door.

The Ishida apartment was quiet, which she expected. She knew his father was working the night of Christmas Eve, and so Yamato would be alone-though only momentarily. His invitation to dinner at her apartment had been accepted. All day Sora had assisted her mother with the preparations, and her father, on sabbatical from teaching in Kyoto, was fortunately around as well to help. The approaching family dinner warmed her considerably, and it must have shown.

"You're taking Christmas cheer very seriously," Yamato commented, smirking at her as she took off her shoes. Sora colored ever deeper, conscious now of the blooming pink on her cheeks.

Piyomon revealed herself behind Sora's legs.

"It's cold out there!" said the avian digimon, flapping her wings. "Brrr!"

"It's the cold, then," Yamato agreed, playing along. He reached for her, foreknuckle lightly grazing her cheek, exploring the heat of her blush. Sora tucked her chin into her scarf, hiding her smile, keeping her eyes on him. She didn't even realize he had taken the box from her hands.

"Do you mind if we exchange gifts now?" she asked. She sat on the couch beside him. Piyomon climbed up next to her. Gabumon was already seated beside Yamato.

"Sure," he said. Ready, and, she thought, perhaps proudly, he handed his gift to her.

Sora looked at the present lying on her lap, assessing the weight. She was about to peel off the first piece of tape when Yamato covered her hand with his.

"Actually," he began. Distracted, Sora looked up at him, and he swiped the gift out of her clutch. "I don't want to keep your mother waiting on dinner because of me. Let's open them outside on our way out?"

"But it's so cold!" Piyomon repeated. " _Brrr!_ "

Sora chuckled.

"I'd lend you my fur if I could," offered Gabumon.

Yamato couldn't help but snort with laughter. He had known Gabumon to shed his fur on only one other occasion, and it was because of him.

"That's a privilege only reserved for Yamato, I'm afraid," said Sora, seemingly reading his mind. "Don't worry, Piyo," she assured. Promptly, she wrapped her scarf around her digimon's neck. "This should warm you up."

Pleased and prepared, they exited the apartment, boxes back in hand. The distance from his apartment to hers was short enough to walk, and they held hands while their digimon trailed them. They spoke little, opting to listen to the city, to Piyomon and Gabumon's soft, praising chatter about the Christmas light displays. Sora let her thumb roam over Yamato's dry skin, no doubt from the windburn and chill of winter.

"Let's stop here?" she requested, pausing beside a bus bench.

"The park's not that far off," said Yamato. "Don't you think it'd be nicer there?"

She smiled.

"I'm very happy to do this here, Yama," she replied. "With you."

He deferred, lips twisting with withheld comment, though Sora suspected he was trying more not to grin than to speak. She giggled and sat down.

His gift to her was replanted on her lap and she peeled off its paper, handing it to Piyomon who neatly set it on the concrete floor and proceeded to fold it as best as she could with her beak. Sora lifted the lid.

Inside were earmuffs, round, fuzzy, the color of the sky on a bright summer's day. She was reminded of the hat she wore in her grade school days, the one with the light blue straps, dangling, the dome itself snug and globular, giving her many countless days of matted hat hair.

"As Piyomon kindly reminds us," began Yamato, taking the earmuffs out of the box himself, "it's very cold outside." He lowered his head, looking at her, blue eyes blinking once to beseech permission. She nodded and felt the muffs slide over her ears. The band rested and compressed against her head. Yamato's fingers cupped the muffs, making slight adjustments to fit her perfectly.

"Ooh!" cooed Piyomon. "Are they warm, Sora? Are you warm?"

"I am," she answered, looking at Yamato. "I like the color, too." She winked and had to laugh when she thought she saw Yamato flinch at the flirt. They were in public after all.

"Now, it's his turn!" cried Piyomon. Sora told her digimon to rest easy, they would get to it, and her feathered friend calmed her flouncing. Instead, she scooted closer to Yamato, wings on his lap, using it to support herself as she leaned in for the unveiling. Similarly, Gabumon had his claws on Sora's knee, squat head craning as she lifted Yamato's gift and placed it before him.

He undid the ribbon, hands white under the streetlight, highlighting callouses, the little nicks of scars here and there from constant play against abrasive metal strings, the memories of music in the making. A moment later, and he was lifting a pair of red gloves from the box. He held them aloft like mistletoe, admiring them from a lower vantage point. His blue eyes were wide and crystalline in the moonlight, as awed as a boy catching sight of a falling star in the sky.

"I hope I got your size right," worried Sora. She was itching to have him put them on, and the only way she could bide time was to voice her concerns aloud.

"No," Yamato assured her, bringing them down, "they look about right."

"Only one way to find out for sure," said Gabumon.

Sora nodded and, before Yamato could stop her, she snatched both a glove and his hand.

"I made them fingerless," she said, idly, holding his wrist as she slipped the glove on. Easily, the knit slid over each finger, over the back of his hand, over the knuckles. "In case you decided to play outside," she finished. Yamato wiggled his digits once the glove was on, testing the conformity. Sora helped him along, wedging her fingers between his, the two of them mirroring movements, fingers up, then laced, up, then entwined. She repeated the same with the other hand.

"And as my friend Piyomon so kindly reminds us," Sora began, echoing him. She stroked the backs of his hands, yearned to bring them to her lips to kiss, but she settled for squeezing them. "It's cold out here, and _you_ , Yamato, need to protect your hands from the winter."

She felt her digits pressed together, tightened in his grip.

"Thank you, Sora," he said. He pulled her back on her feet, the strength and speed of the tug enough to have her thinking she'd smack into him in the chest. But they collided like a pair of dancers, meeting in the middle with tenderness and control, intention tight and palpable like a taut string, but tamed, balanced.

She exhaled into his embrace.

"Merry Christmas, Yamato," she whispered.

He kissed her forehead.

"Merry Christmas, Sora."

xXx

 **A/N** **: So this was a fulfillment of my prompt for Sorato Season! Tried to keep things canon (this does take place in 2005, the year of Digimon Tri), but if there's a slip up here and there, please forgive it.**

 **I had to write this on the fly since I nearly forgot I had the prompt to complete! (So please excuse the lazy writing!)**

 **Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed!**

 **Cheers, and Happy New Year to all!**

 **Aveza**


End file.
